this week on "moyers and company," you see members of both parties now going hat in hand to the exact same group of people on wall street, and it's naive to think that they're not getting something for their contribution. >> and -- >> in order for us as americans who want to see public solutions to our common problems to achieve what we want to achieve, we are going to have to clean up washington first. >> funding is provided by -- >> carnegie corporation in new york, doing real and permanent good in the world. >> the kohlberg foundation.

the partridge foundation, a john and polyguth charitable fund. park foundation dedicated to heightening public awareness of critical issues. the herb albert foundation, supporting organizations whose mission is to promote compassion and creativity in our society. the bernard and audrey rapport foundation. more information at mackfound.org. the bessie and jesse fink foundation. hkh foundation. barbara g. fleischman and our sole corporate sponsor, mutual of america. that's why we're your retirement company. welcome. well, republicans are still fighting the cultural wars primary by primary and caucus by

caucus, president obama is campaigning feverishly to win back the votes of the millenals. those are the americans born roughly between 1978 and 2000, coming now to political maturity. 2/3 voted for obama in 2008, but a new harvard study shows in the last two years, his approval rating among them has dropped 12 points. that's enough to decide a close election in november. and that may be why the president recently threatened to cut federal aid to schools that, quote, jack up tuition. many of the millenials are coming out of college with big loans to repay. yet, another study describes their enthusiasm for him as substantially deleted, so his re-election campaign has been wooing recently through what obama himself calls this new-fangled thing, social media. this week, we are going to talk with one of the millenials most

thoughtful advocates. her name is heather mcgee. listen. >> i turned 30 last year, which puts me at the very start of the millenial generation. we are known for our sense of entrepreneurship, our volunteerism, our tolerance of diversity, and for being the first generation in american history to not do better than their parents. and that was clear before the wall street banks crashed the economy and left our generation to graduate into the worst job market since the great depression. >> as we've been reporting in our series on winner-take-all politics, the millenials grew up in the years when croney capitalists and powerful officials in washington rewrote the rules of the economic game to favor the relative few at the top over everyone else. that collusion brought devastating results from the financial crash four years ago to the greatest inequality in america since the great depression of the 1930s. our economy stopped working for

everyday americans. so this generation of young people faces a stacked deck. they will find it tough to make their way to the middle class. as you heard heather mcgee say, millenials are the first generation not likely to do better than the one that came before them. there are 80 plus million of them, 60% are white, 14% black, 19% latino, 5% asian and a smattering of others. here is something of what they're up against. unemployment among our youngest adults is almost twice the national average. 25 to 34-year-old male high school graduates are earning 25% less than they earned in 1980. almost 40% of young adults say their personal debt increased in the last four years, a lot of that directly related to student loans. back in 1980, college tuition averaged $3,000 adjusted for

inflation. today, that average has almost tripled. back then, pell grants covered more than 2/3 of the cost for low-income students. today it's down to just over 1/3. those who graduate are in debt an average of $25,000. and yet, despite the dire statistics, almost 80% of young people say they still believe in the american dream beings and that's true across race and ethnicity, hope, fortunately, springs eternal. heather mcgee graduated from yale and the law school of the university of california at berkeley. she now runs the washington office of the research and advocacy group demos. she was active in fighting for financial reform in congress after the crash of '08 and for new measures to protect consumers. heather mcgee, welcome. >> thank you. >> the facts and figures paint a very dismal picture of your

generation, but let me ask you this. is it something of a myth, this upward mobility in american life? i could take you to the halls of west virginia, to the back streets of our big cities, to small towns throughout the country where poor kids never got up and out. >> absolutely. i think it's a myth that every kid is going to have that opportunity and it's one of the great myths that's been quite destructive, actually, to our willingness as a country to make sure there are those ladders of opportunity in place through policies like universal education, childcare and early childcare and development, but the truth has been that over the course of our history, every generation as a whole has done better financially. and in fact, up until a few generations ago, has been able to do better financially by working even less, by being more productive and having more time for home life and for civic life. >> other generations have faced severe problems. they've experienced depression,

recession, war, what makes this different? >> i think what's different about this generation is that all of the external changes that happened, globalization, technological change, the information age, all of that happened, and yet it happened at a time when we lost our social contract. so america could have weathered all of the economic storms that happened over the course of our lifetimes in a much better way that did not decimate the middle class if we had a social contract in this country. if we not at the same time decided that, in fact, the economy would work better if everybody was on their own. that's what's different. >> do you and your peers get together and say what hit us? >> most of my friends who are not political and don't have an economics background, who are starting out their lives right now, having children, getting a house, don't even think about the fact that these are common problems that could have public solutions. they don't think there could be financial aid for childcare. they don't think that health care could be portable and go

with them and be guaranteed. they don't think there could be a pension that is more solid and durable than a 401(k). it's -- that's actually been the most pernicious effect of the reagan revolution to take the horizon of public policy solutions that could really help people sort of off the radar entirely. >> but if your peers don't think they have a problem, do they have a problem? >> they know that they have the problems. they just don't know that there could be public solutions. i think that's one of the major projects we have to do is really create a generational comparison, where we say, for example, my generation, my grandparents were able to go to college, go to higher education, have a middle class life, save for the future, retire comfortably because of public investments that were made like the g.i. bill. because of the federal highway system, because of the retirement system that labor and union jobs were able to provide.

>> how did you get a start? who were your parents? what did they do? >> i'm the descendent of american slaves from the south, mississippi, georgia, louisiana. my grandparents and great grandparents moved up to work in the steel mills of chicago. my grandmother and grandfather both had public sector jobs at a time when there was rampant discrimination in the private sector. they became leaders in the police force in chicago. social worker in the chicago public schools. they were able to retire comfortably. they were able to help my parents out. my parents were able, in turn to help me out. but the idea that i'm going to be able to do that for my children given the amount of debt that i have is something that i think i've just had to let go of. >> that's what can happen in the public sector. the public sector over the last 50 years has created a very large middle class for people who would otherwise never have gotten into it. now with the assault on public unions and public sector, that

ladder's been taken down, right? >> absolutely. it's been so shocking to see the demonization of public servants. it's part of that 40-year attack on the public. i think the fact that we are seeing right now that teachers, public janitors, school workers, bus drivers, cops, firefighters are the new welfare queens in our public life. really, they are. if you think about the stereotype that's being trafficked right now, they are talking about these lazy, you know, bloated pensions that are just cheating the system. i mean, that's the welfare queens of the 1980s. what has been what's the same between the welfare queen and this image of the postal worker who doesn't really deserve the benefits they're getting? these old shop-worn stereotypes of race and gender. >> does it seem to you that inequality is sort of the quest your generation has been handed. >> absolutely. our generation is the most

diverse generation in american history. half of young people under 18 are children of color, but we are also the generation that is experiencing this record inequality. inequality in our economy and inequality in our democracy. >> what do you mean inequality in democracy? >> let's take, for example, the fact that since what is born there's an entirely new industry that didn't used to exist. that of corporate lobbyist, for which there are now 24 for every member of congress. if you think about who people in congress spend their time with, who they listen to, who they spend one out of every three minutes they're in office fund-raising around, it is people in the top 1%. it is their lobbyists. it is corporate ceos. so much of the policy decisions, whether they are the decision to keep the minimum wage low. i mean, if the minimum wage was at its peak in 1968 and lost nearly half its purchasing power, think of that one policy decision that is the number one

target for the chamber of commerce year after year to make sure the minimum wage stays low, that absolutely benefits people who are invested in big corporations and the executives of big corporations, but the american worker has seen their buying power erode and erode. >> so is this what you meant in that speech when you said what has happened to your generation was the consequence of a social experiment? is that what you mean? >> yeah. it's been a really grand experiment that has in neoliberal economics trackled down. the experiment that said in fact the best way we can shape our economy is to make sure the most gains are amassed and kept at the very top, and that somehow those would trickle down. that's been the experiment. it was a theory that was tested. my generation were the guinea pigs. that experiment absolutely failed if the aim was to produce greater prosperity for america. that means american people.

if the aim was to actually stop at the top and just create greater corporate profits and greater gdp growth, then it's been a success. i think most americans would not have bought into that kind of experiment. >> i read just the other day that only 29% of americans have college degrees. is college still a way up and out? >> it is. and you would think -- this is one of those great ironies. at the same time that we had the globalization, the transfer from industrial age to the information age, so the premium on higher education became so high, the same time we decided to reorder our economy so those with information and knowledge would be able to gallop ahead, we also made it less affordable and more difficult for people to get that new golden ticket to a middle class life. it doesn't make any sense. around that same time, around when i was born, we shifted our federal support for higher

education. used to be the majority of it was grants, like the g.i. bill that put my grandparents to college. grants like my parents had. to loans, which is what the majority of my generation is now taking on in order to basically pay government and the banks for the privilege of having a middle class life. >> what does it say that many of you have to pay wall street to go to college? >> it's amazing, isn't it? not only do we have to do that, but particularly with these private loans which are just galloping away in terms of how quickly they're becoming a share of the market. it's like 18% interest on some of these private loans. it's like putting your $10,000 tuition on a high-interest credit card. if you think about that, if you think about the fact that the next generation has to pay an 18% interest rate to get a college education, where as the very banks and financial companies they are paying that interest to are getting basically a zero interest loan from the government every day, shocking. >> we have a video clip of a young man who is speaking at a

rally objecting to tuition increases. let's take a look at it. >> me myself am in debt $70,000. and when do i expect to be free of that? possibly never! >> possibly never! >> i actually got a letter from sallie mae saying that if i don't start paying today, $900 a month, they're going to have more aggressive attacks at collecting my debt. and so i refuse to pay on this student debt with this ball and chain that will follow me the rest of my life! and so i am going to burn this right here and now.

>> how do you respond to that? >> honestly, it really does break my heart, bill. if you think about what young people are facing when they know that they have to play by the rules, go to college, get a good education, and yet they know that the price of that is going to be tens of thousands of dollars of debt on the other end, what options are young people supposed to have? i really don't think that we can say as a country that we are a middle class nation, that we care about recreating middle class for the future generation, and have an entire generation indebted and have so much money diverted from much more productive uses in the economy, simply to play off loans from a really flawed financial aid system. >> he quoted a letter from sallie mae for the benefit of my audience, who is sallie mae? >> sallie mae, other than being one of the most biggest contributors to washington and biggest lobbyists is a financial

company that their entire business model is on student loans, private and federally subsidized. >> the obama administration tried to do something to clean up that student loan business. and got a piece of legislation through that was promising, but then lobbyists from the industry, including many belonged to the democratic party swarmed all over it, and have in effect throttled it. what does that say to you? >> it says that the financial industry is an equal opportunity employer of congress people, unfortunately. we've really seen an incredible explosion in the amount of financial contributions from the financial sector, including sallie mae, wall street banks, real estate, insurance, over just the period of my lifetime. the result has been that any time there are any kinds of steps forward, there's always a desire to sort of erode the progress. >> you're sympathetic to that young man and all of them, but do you think refusing to pay is

a solution? >> i think the right solution would be for us to undo what sallie mae and other lenders got slipped into that terrible 2005 bankruptcy bill, which is that private student loans and student loans are not dischargeable in bankruptcy. i mean think about it. bankruptcy, which huge multibillion dollar corporations seem to be filing every day and move on just as if nothing happened, and yet regular middle class families, the average american family, the two most important loans in their life, the two most onerous loans in their life are education and for their primary residence. they can't be relieved of in bankruptcy. our bankruptcy code says to the american people, you don't have any second chance when it comes to those two major primary loans. we're just making people give up so early on because it's impossible to get out from under debt like that. >> what's the answer to the high cost of college and the loans that kids have to take out?

>> yeah. we need to fundamentally shift back to a system of grants, not loans. i mean, we cannot indenture a generation just to pay for a ticket to the middle class life. we need to do something for people who are not going to get bachelor degrees. it's not a majority of young people who have a college degree. we need to raise the wage floor. we need to embrace unions in this country. >> why? >> unions created the middle class. the jobs that were the steel mill jobs weren't the good jobs. they were made into good jobs because the people working those jobs had a voice on the shop floor and had some power when it came to setting their wages, which makes all of the sense in the world. that the people baking the pie should be the ones that have a decent slice of it. >> what are the racial dimensions of this? i just read the other day that 30% of all young

african-americans below 24 are out of work. >> yeah. i mean, i think that this is what i think is in a way the great unspoken disaster of our lifetime. when we saw the rapid deindustrialization of our cities. where we saw the jobs that used to be able to create decent working and middle class lifestyles for people who went to work every day but didn't have a college degree. when we had that deindustrialization from the inner cities, who greatly, greatly was damaged by that economic policy, essentially, were particularly people trapped in inner cities. generally speaking throughout our history, people as economic flows have changed, people have been free to move and follow jobs, but because race is so pernicious, because segregation is still very real, because of the red lining by the fha that

went straight into the 1980s, we did not see that flow. then we haven't seen the kind of commitment to evening out the pockets of privation in our country we need to see to have a strong middle class diverse that is america. >> how do you have a new social contract if we don't have a sense of community? >> i think that is the great question of our time. because if you look at this sort of hostility and anxiety around public solutions at its root, it's anxiety around who the public is. i think that that's happened because of the real explosion in diversity, but i think it's something that there is an answer to. it takes leadership. you have to think about the same system that allows people based on their physical appearance to be valued so differently, to create this heirarchy who allows

the ceo of walmart who makes $16,000 an hour, whereas his co-worker on the shop floor makes about $7 an hour. the woman or man in malaysia or india who actually is making the product on the shelves makes pennies an hour. yet they're all in the same enterprise. you have to think about what that says to us as people when we value the labor of three people who are in the same an - enterprise essentially so differently. when you and i walk into a store and we see a phone on the shelf and one is $30 and one is $300 what do we decide about the more expensive one, that it's better. automatically. >> there is something about it. >> exactly. if it's more expensive, it's better. the logic of applying that same logic to human beings, which we do all the time in this free market with no fundamental values of human dignity is dangerous. it's the same logic that leads

us to have racial heirarchies, as well. >> inju >> your generation came out and were a decisive if not the decisive factor in obama's margin. will your generation come out for obama again? >> think it's a difficult question. the millenial generation is showing preference for democratic policies, values and ideals and democratic candidates over republican candidates. just like with all other kinds of voters, young voters are voting on the economy, and as the state of the young america has shown, this generation, my generation is really feeling the brunt of the recession that capped off 30 years of widening economic inequality and insecurity. so young people can't say that they're better off financially

than they were four years ago. i really believe that given the levels of unemployment in the young adult generation, the president needs to call for -- and i understand it's difficult to pass through congress -- but on the campaign trail he needs to call for a wpa style generational jobs program all across this country. it would be a transformational generational experience. it would be something that would expose people to different americans from different walks of life, but it would also be something that would say, finally, for once and for all, yes, your american government is on your side, young people. we're not always going to leave you to the mercy of the banks and selfish employers and the vagaries of the so-called free market. we are going to say your future matters to us as a country. >> you're calling for more and more government help. you just asked obama to take a more aggressive position with using the government to put

people to work. you're up against, of course, the predisposition of people out across the country that i don't want to pay taxes to those folks who haven't been spending it well, fighting wars, passing the cost on, extending benefits to wall street, bailing out the banks. i don't want to support government any more. >> absolutely. i think that in order for us as americans who want to see public solutions to our common problems, to really achieve what we want to achieve, we are going to have to clean up washington first. it is absolutely important. for example, why would the american people trust washington to do what's right when they know that so much of their energy is focused on rewarding the people who brought them to the party? which is the wealthiest people in the country and organized corporate elite. we've got to clean up the money in politics problem. it's time to take that

incredibly personal issue of your own personal finances and make them political. >> doing what? >> i think we need to stay politically involved on policy issues. we need to, as a generation, really be the generation that calls for and holds leaders accountable for cleaning up washington, for addressing the political inequality that is perpetuating economic inequality. we need to be a very politically engaged generation. we need to run for office. debt be damned. >> heather mcgee, i enjoyed this conversation. thank you for joining me. >> thank you so much for having me, bill. >> heather mcgee speaks how the neo liberal economic experience of the last 30 years, including cutting taxes on the rich and waiting for the wealth and prosperity to trickle down has left her generation of millenial

standing under a spigot someone forgot to turn on. after a few drops and dribs, it went dry. so did the very notion of equal opportunity for all. and today, we are living in a country deeply divided between winners and losers. nowhere is that more evident than in our tax system, so distorted by loopholes and exemptions, credits and deductions favoring the already-rich and powerful, that it no longer can raise the money needed to pay the government's bills. among the people who saw this crisis coming was the conservative economist bruce bartlett, the supply side champion who wrote the manifesto for the reagan revolution. bartlett became a senior policy analyst in the reagan white house and top official at the treasury department under the first george bush. yet for all those credentials, he is today an outcast from the very conservative ranks where he was once so influential. that's because bruce bartlett dared to write a book

criticizing the second george bush as a pretend conservative who slashed taxes but still spent with wild abandon. the subtitle says it all, "how george w. bush bankrupted america and betrayed the reagan legacy." for his heresy, bartlett was sacked by the conservative think tank where he worked. undaunted, this card-carrying advocate of free markets and small government has been a prolific writer for popular and academic journals and just established a new book, "the benefit and the burden, tax reform, why we need it and what it will take." it's a lehman's guide through the jungle of a tax system that thanks to rented poll situation and anti-tax laws enable the 1% to make out like bandits while our national debt soars sky high. i talked to bruce bartlett soon after he had finished his new book. you made the point america's top

earning 1% had an effective 33.1% federal income tax rate in 1986. and an effective rate of only 23.3% in 2008. you say yet the top 1% had kept paying at the 1986 effective rate, quote, the federal debt today would be $1.7 trillion lower. that's a lot of money. >> that's right. when i say effective rate, that means the taxes they pay divided by their income. so that tells you what the revenue is that the government gets from taxing them. and clearly, they were doing okay at the beginning of that period. that was ronald reagan's administration. up till 1986 the top statutory rate was 50%. now it's 35%, and all the pressure is on to lower that even further. this just doesn't make a great deal of sense to me.

when people say, oh, we can't raise taxes on the rich, they'll go on strike, they'll move to another country, but within recent memory, it hasn't been that long ago that we had rates that were substantially higher and these people did just fine. >> when i was growing up in the '50s, the top marginal tax rate, if i remember correctly, was 91%. >> that's right. i just think that there's a disconnect between the facts of what taxes do and the sort of mythology of what they do. i think in many ways, the tax debate is a code for an attitude towards the individual visa vie government. if you think government is bad or incompetent, if you glorify the individual against the state, then taxes is sort of the territory where you're going to fight these battles. it's a signaling mechanism. it tells people you're one of us

on the tax issue. you're for tax cuts and low tax rates and things like that. that translates into an attitude towards government that goes into spending and lots of other issues. >> there is also a case, isn't it, if you pay taxes, whatever taxes you pay, you ought to get services in return. you want your mail to be delivered on time, pot holes to be fixed, bridge to be safe, the schools to teach your children, and there is this dissatisfaction with government because it hasn't been delivering the services that people really have a right to expect. >> that's true. the composition of government spending has changed enormously over the last 50 years or so. the vast bulk of federal spending goes to medicare, social security, medicaid, interest on the debt. that has a lot to do with, i think, people's attitudes towards government. they view this restriction policy as taking from me and giving to them, so there is an

antagonistic attitude towards that kind of just shuffling money around, but people don't seem to be willing or able to confront that fact. instead of concentrating solely on the tax side of the equation, but you can't do one without the other. you just can't keep cutting taxes unless you're going to start cutting spending meaningfully, which means essentially cutting medicare. that is the 600 pound gorilla. >> you're right. the bush tax cuts added at least $3 trillion to the debt. when bush took office, budget projection showed a $6 trillion surplus, enough to pay off the pending $6 trillion national debt. instead, by the time bush left office, the national debt had ballooned to over $10 trillion, and the republicans are refusing to take responsibility for having driven the borrowing

binge that put the nation in the hole it is in now. >> that is exactly correct. one of the things that bush argued during the campaign, not so much after he took office, is that budget surpluses are a bad thing. because they might get spent. it really sounds silly when you say that. he did say this over and over again. so the idea of cutting taxes was a part of a policy that i call starving the beast. you take away the government's credit card, as ronald reagan said, and this will force spending down. this will shrink the size of government. and conservatives believe that there's only so much freedom out there. the more the government, the more power government has there's less freedom for the people. they have a tendency to look at this in terms of spending as a share of gdp, so it can be

measured very prescisely. if the government takes 25% gdp, we only have 75% freedom. if we can cut spending down to 20% gdp, we would gain 5% freedom. we'll go from being 75% free to being 80%. i'm serious. this is the way they think. this drives a lot of these policies that, on the surface don't make any sense. they're just about taking away the government's resources to force it to shrink. if you cut the budgets of the regulatory agencies, then they can't regulate. this is a good thing. they really believe that there is absolutely nothing good that comes out of government unless it comes out of the pentagon. the starve the beast theory is really extraordinarily pernicious because one of the things that is related to is the so-called tax pledge, which my friend grover norquist came up with, and which has become a ban on raising taxes at any time for

any reason. at the same time, all tax cuts are okay. so you just have this constant ratchet down. every time you can cut taxes, you lowered the threshold that you can never again go up again. it's like you're coming down a series of stairs. this is all very conscious because grover believes if you take away the government's ability to tax, it will necessarily be forced to spend less, government will shrink, freedom will increase. it's that simple. >> grover norquist is the one who famously said he would like to shrink the government to the size where it could fit into a bath tub and be drowned. take it back to the size it was before world war ii. >> we'd have to go back before world war i really to get to that size. >> remember back when the first george bush was in the white house. he raised taxes because even though he said, "read my lips, no new taxes," in his acceptance speech, he raised taxes because

he felt the economic situation necessitated new taxes. the conservative republicans went after him. they were willing to take on one of their own. >> yes, and they did. you had ross perot running. a great many republicans voted for him because they thought that george bush was turncoat. i think mr. bush's support for a tax increase in 1990 was an enormous act of courage. that no republican has been willing to show since and probably never will. i mean, would you want to be a republican running in a republican primary where grover norquist comes in and says, this guy must be defeated because he violated the pledge? or he refused to sign the pledge? members of the tea party don't know anything else. that guy's history. we saw during the 2010 campaign these tea party people are

capable and perfectly willing to defeat incumbent republicans even at the cost of having that seat go to the democrats. you saw guys like robert bennett in utah who is no liberal by any means. >> the epitome of the conservative stalwart. >> he wasn't conservative enough. so they tossed him out. republicans lost seats in places like colorado and delaware where the tea party people were so insi insistent that these rhino republicans, that stands for republican in name only -- there is nothing worse you can be called, but there are other groups, as well. the club for growth has been extraordinarily important. they ensure that there will always be unlimited financing available to anybody who runs against a rhino, against a tax

pledge breaker who are somebody who refuses to sign the pledge. they are very obsessed about this. they have vast sums of money, and even before the citizens united decision made it easier for them to raise money, they still had an enormous amount of money available. i honestly don't know where it's coming from or what we can do about it. >> you made it clear the bush cuts were worth little to those making $150,000, but a huge amount to those making $5 million, $15 million, $15 million. do the folks in the tea party get that? >> i'm not sure. i'm not sure if they really know very much about taxation. back when the tea party first came into existence back in 2009, they had a big demonstration in washington, and we went around and surveyed a good percentage of the people in this demonstration about what they knew about taxes, what they thought the top rate was, what they thought their tax rate was.

questions of just straight factual knowledge, not opinion. it turned out that these people all thought taxes were vastly higher than they really are. and that they were paying exorbitantly high tax rates that were impossible for them to pay. i think what is going on here is simple misinformation. there have been other polls and things showing the same thing. i mean, if you really thought, if you're a typical middle class person, you really believe the government was taking half your income, you'd be out demonstrating. but the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of people pay less than 10% federal income taxes. so they simply have a wrong understanding of what they pay. >> well, there are all the other taxes, of course, state taxes, sales taxes, toll fees. >> that's true, but all taxes taken together as a share of gdp

is only about a 1/3, or even less, more like 30%. that is all federal, state and local taxes put together. so you're not going to have taxes being much higher than that for anybody. >> you remind me that ideology is a world view that can be believed despite all the evidence of the contrary. >> it's very much like religion. i think that it's not a surprise that so many very devout christians are part of the republican party and accept a lot of this because the nature of deep religious belief is faith, which means you accept things for which there is no proof. so i think it's not that hard to shift that faith over to believe a lot of other things that you've been told are true so many times that you just accept that on faith, as well. if you cut taxes, revenues will go up, you know, and things of that sort.

that all tax cuts are good and all spending cuts are good, and all government is bad. >> are you pessimistic? >> absolutely. i'm very pessimistic. >> what makes you most pessimistic right now? >> the gridlock in congress. 't o it's the odiscuss iuesn reatyem fctr major itha t that theyh does the governmen?

peopbeieh amihin atv a pri onhes ih i to

pot,thit wng neti onolpeap oer cos yi ntbuon

ofoue,mala te,ut ilud,eevilsoifaxs, ten tcg

government. data fm t npartisan congressit office. let me see what you aou this. between 1979nd2007, about 30 years there, roughly ll income growth, post tax, post benit acredto t upper 1%. justfi years between 2002 and 2007, over lfento the top 1%. what do yout?

>> that's extraordinary. but i tnk i'sev wse than the data show, but if you the 1%, you find out the vast bulk of the gains made by the 1% were by the top 0.1%. this also makes another point which is that if you ignore the top 1%, the in inequality is nha great. the income classes of the bottom 99% have moved more or less toge it's the top 1% that is just skyrocketed up out proportion to everybody else. so in other words, there is a huge differceeten being in the 98% and the 99 percentile. it's important not tluin people who merely make a couple of hundred thousandoara ari people making millions upon millions and even billions

of dollars ayr. that's something that i think is not, doesn't always comehu t context of the debate. we're talking about a really small number of people in the hundreds, who have rely acquired a huge ouiz sre of all of the gains that this country has made in tmsf co a wealth over the last few years. >> more than anotergroup, the taxat r the wealthiest americans have been cin down these last 30 years. thisoun'ave happened without a bipartisan consensus at i'so thing. >> yes. >> how did that happen? >> clrl eogy has a great deal to do with it. the conservative side of our political spectrum has had an outsized voice over the last few years. i think espeiayin t establishment of fox news, which hasreed echo chamber in which people just hear the same

ideas repeated ad infinitum. you hear the same idea over and veain you can call it propaganda, if you like. it's brd believed and people just keep saying these things all themhat rich people create jobs. yes, rich people create jobs. ty' motivated primarily by taxation. yes, they're motivated by taxation. i bom as mantra. >> that's right. year after year of people tcngoxe d listening to talkao d conditioned them in advance to believe that the gvemesesnsle for all of our oblems. >> your old boss ronald reagan said government is therle not the solution. and bill clinton, democrat, chd at reafricfrain when he was in office. >> an idea a friend of my mike

loughlin came up with, e conservative side of this political spectrum hates government per se, and it's in their interest to make it be ineffective. they'll cut the budget for regulatory commission, say security and exchange commission. when a problem arises on wall street, they'll say this proves that the s.e.c. doesn't work and this will justify frtrut in the agency's budget. so everything that they do reenforces their basic ideology, which is the government is the ur o all of our problems. government doesn't work. and then they make sure that it doesn't work by cutting its buetn tying its hands so that everything is era a race tt bottom. it didn't used to be that way. coming out of world war ii, in particular, people had a much more positive attitude towards government. iwa smein tatwa capable of doing good.

of course, that led to the creation of many programs to aid the po a t middle class, housing programs, things of that sort. >> if it's true in some profound way washington, government, has made the rich richer and turned its back on the middle class, ouca hdly blame tea partiers and others for saying why should i be taxed more for the government? the government is working for them. it's not working for me. >> isn't that dynamic working out here? >> i think so. certainly, thecpyall street group has some similarities with the tea party group in that regard. i've always thought a lot of these tea party people could easily switch sides, like overnight, depending on the circumstances. for example, it's obvious a lot t party members tend to be elderly. you've seen that famous sign, "tell the government to keep its

hands off my dire think as long as the government does keep its hands off their medicare, they're fine with talking about low xes, but once they start to realize that the republicans really do want to not just cut medicare but essentially abolsh it, i just think those people are not going to be part of the tea party. they are going to be over with the occupy wall street. >> bruce bartlett, thk you very much for sharing this time with us. >> thank you. watching what's happening to our democracy is like watching the cruise ship "costa concor a concordia" flounder and slowly sink into the sea off the coast of india, the passengers short of life vests scramble for safety while the captain trips and falls conveniently into a

waiting lifeboat. here as home, we are drowning with gaping holes torn into the hull of the ship of state from charges decimated by the owners and manipulators of capital. their wealth has become a demonic force in politics. nothing can stop them. not the law, written to accommodate them. not scrutiny. they have no shame. not a decent respect for the welfare of others. people without means whose safety net has been shredded leaving them helpless before events beyond their control, like those passengers on that ship. the obstacles facing the millennium generation didn't just happen. an economy skewed to the top, low wages and missing jobs, predatory interest on college loans, these are consequences of government politically engineered by and for the 1%. as our tax code, a product of money and politics, of influence and favoritism, of lobbyists and

the laws they draft for politicians to enact. so here is what we're up against. read it and weep. america's pluticrats play the political ponies. that's from something called "too much" an internet publication for the institute of policy studies that describes its as an online weekly of politics and inequality. our politics has replaced horse racing as the sport of kings, but these aren't your everyday potentates. they are corporate moguls, who by the divine right, not of god, but the united states supreme court and citizens united decision are buying politicians like so much pricey horse flesh. all that money pouring into super pacs, much from secret sources, merely an investment in the best government money can buy should their horse pay off

in november. all this can numb the soul and chill the arthur of the most devoted citizen exposed to the buying and selling of our democratic birthright. but there is an antidote. on our website billmoyers.com, we'll link you to a vision of hope. sarah robinson, a senior editor of alter net.org has written "new rules for radicals," ten ways to spark change in a post occupy world. check it out. my hunch is you'll cease to weep over our sinking ship of state and start working to repair it. coming up on "moyers and company,"ita dove and the poems that tell the story of america. >> suddenly there were these voices that came out, ordinary town folk voices. what he says in this poem is where are these voices? do they disappear? do they disappear when we shut the book? >> and on our website you can

find out more about the millenial generation and hear directly from some people struggling against economic inequality. that's all at billmoyers.com. see you there and see you here next time. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com got a question for bill? bring it with you to billmoyers.com. send it in and see some recent answers. this episode of moyers and company is available on dvd for $19.95. to order call 1-800-336-1917 or write to the address on your screen. >> funding is provided by carnegie corporation of new

york, celebrating 100 years of philanthropy and committed to doing real and permanent good in the world. the kohlberg fnt production funh support from the partridge foundation, a john and polly gut charitable fund. park foundation dedicated to heightening public awareness of critical issues. the herb albert foundation. the bernard and audrey rappaport foundation. more information at mack found.org. the betsy and jesse fink foundation, the hkh foundation. barbara g. fleischman and our sole corporate sponsor, mutual of america, designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we're your retirement company.